Friday, April 9, 2004

Latest Thing That I Hate

Death to oversealed plastic packages! I am so sick of having to use an X-acto knife to open everything I buy. (In fact, I seem to have misplaced my X-acto knife after my last war with a package.)

Is it just me or are these packages becoming more and more prevalent? You know the ones -- where they take two pieces of plastic, insert your printer ink, ear thermometer, or whatever between them, and then melt the two pieces of plastic together with such force that they will never be two pieces of plastic again. It's not like the olden days when you could wedge a finger in there (through the little hole they use to display the package in the store) and pry the two pieces apart. Heck no. You instead have to cut one (or more) of the vacuum sealed edges off the package in order to free your item.

And that's if you're LUCKY. Sometimes, it isn't just the EDGES of the plastic that have been melted together -- it's the entire parcel except for the little bubble of air where your product is. In that case, you have to carve your purchase out with the X-acto knife.

Look, I understand why fear of shoplifting makes it attractive for manufacturers to seal small products in packages that are (1) big, unwieldy and therefore difficult to steal; and (2) impossible to open by someone casually walking by in the store. But once you actually BUY the parcel -- having paid for it with real live U.S. cash -- you should be able to open it without special tools. Say, maybe you want to use your brand new car-cigarette-lighter-adapter for your CD player in the car on the way home from the store. If you can't even OPEN the damn thing with the tools at your disposal in the passenger compartment of your car, something is very wrong here.

Not to mention the number of times I've injured myself getting the little buggers open. (And, yes, I know I tend to be a little injury-prone, but still.) I'm not talking about the occasional risk of finger-choppage by indiscriminate X-acto knife usage. I'm talking about the sharp-as-hell edges of the plastic that remain after you cut it open, which you then have to wedge your hand between to complete the product-removal-process. You think a paper cut is unpleasant? Try a big-hunk-of-plastic cut. Ow.

2 comments:

grodygeek
said...

Hey, NZ,I'm so with you here. Sharp buggers. Pain in the ass. Yes and yes and yes. Do $9 headphones really need the packaging of death? Does it have to seam welded in triplicate all 360 degrees around? I too am as annoyed or baffled as to the rationale.

LOL! "A big-hunk-of-plastic cut" ! LOL!! I totally agree with you about the whole subject. You have such a great way of expressing it, though! I think you should write a strongly worded letter to whoever those plastic people are & tell them all about it! Who knows? Maybe you'll start a revolution.

The other thing that drives me crazy are those bags in the produce section of the supermarket. Can't get them open 1/2 the time. I stand there for 10 minutes just trying to figure out which end to attempt to open.

About Me

Well, who the hell am I, really? Blogged on (don't shoot me) AOL for years, and, upon AOL-J's implosion, thought I'd move on out here with the big boys.
The journal started off as a record of my initial forays into a gym, as I tried to get fit for a trip to New Zealand -- and then a journal of the trip. Since then, it's sort of grown into a standard whatever-I-happen-to-be-thinking -about blog. I think it's best when I travel, actually, but feel free to check out five years of history (and who knows how much future).